Canada wildfire evacuees say Facebook's news ban 'dangerous' in emergency situation
(www.cbc.ca)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 19 Aug 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/3452358
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 19 Aug 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/3452358
Canada wildfire evacuees say Facebook’s news ban ‘dangerous’ in emergency situation::The ongoing fight between tech company Meta and the federal government over subsidizing news publishers means links to news sources are being blocked on sites like Facebook and Instagram. Wildfire evacuees in the Northwest Territories say that’s making it harder to share life-saving information during an emergency.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Evacuees from the devastating blazes threatening Yellowknife say the ongoing fight between Meta, the owner of Facebook, and Canada’s federal government over who should pay for news has made it harder to spread life-saving information about the wildfires in the Northwest Territories.
Poitras says it’s bad enough having to handle the logistics of getting out in a hurry and worrying about what might happen to her home town while she’s gone, but the situation has been made worse by the ongoing fight between Big Tech and the Canadian government over who should pay for news.
The debate over Bill C-18, known as the Online News Act, may be an academic one in many parts of Canada, but not in the North, where people are dealing with an unfolding natural disaster while suddenly being unable to use one of the most popular communication platforms to share information about wildfire locations and evacuation plans.
A live news conference covered by Cabin Radio and CBC on Wednesday evening announced the evacuation of Yellowknife, but it wasn’t shareable on Facebook, prompting users like Poitras and others to try to get around the block by posting screengrabs of information instead of direct links.
"People in Canada are able to use Facebook and Instagram to connect to their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organisations," said Meta spokesperson David Troya-Alvarez.
She says the world is watching the Canadian dispute closely, as numerous other jurisdictions have similar laws planned, and Meta has clearly "decided to use Canada as a bit of a test population to try this out and see how far they can force the government to go before perhaps keeping or coming to the bargaining table.
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And this is why a link tax is insane. Do we really want any company to be put in a situation where they have to decide whether they want fork up a ton of cash to a third party for the permission to deliver emergency information?
Maybe, just maybe, news aggregators are actually good for the people and aren’t just freeloading.
The downvotes are weird. Seems like a large block of people are ready to destroy the Web because it harms Facebook.
I think that’s correct, a lot of people also just buy into the allegations that Meta/Google are freeloading and harming on Canadian news and do indeed not care because it’s big tech.
The reality is that neither of those companies are required to provide news content, especially Meta who don’t even have a news service at all, just people sharing the news and the link preview opening up using HTML tags that they literally invented for companies to be able to control how the link previews expand on Facebook.
Also a point nobody is talking about is that the legal system forces them to protect their bottomline or they’re liable to be sued by shareholders for failing their fiduciary obligations. If we want good guy companies we need to protect them for being good. Same as if you don’t fight for your patents and trademarks, you can lose them, which forces companies to hit on small companies they’d otherwise be okay with.
In all cases, there’s literally nothing preventing media companies from keeping up with the times. They could just spin up a Mastodon like the BBC did in the UK. Bam, they have their own social media where people could get all the news in a way they control and pocket 100% of the revenue. But no, the conversation is entirely centered around extracting money from big tech, not about making a bill that’s fair and equal for companies of any size. Big tech bad, must harm big tech.
Then we wonder why big tech pulls out of Canada and we whine about it.
TechDirt wrote an article titled “Do People Want A Better Facebook, Or A Dead Facebook?” back in 2019. I feel like that tells you that a fair number of people won’t be happy with Facebook even existing, no matter if the position that it’s taking is one they would normally agree with (ie not having to pay to link to something). Sadly, I think you may be right that some might take the pyrrhic victory, even at the cost of linking on the web.
Maybe govts need to take responsibility for communicating with their residents, rather than relying on 3rd party private companies.
What about cell phone emergency alerts and also radio and TV emergency broadcasts? Also most towns and cities I’ve been to have loud emergency horns as well. I kind of wonder why they don’t use those more. Also this is the US, but I would be shocked if Canada didn’t have something similar setup?
That’s pretty low bandwidth or reach, though. They need to come up with a modern solution already.
It’s not really relying on 3rd party private companies exclusively, since all the other methods of communicating are also running. The wider conversation is around reaching the subset of the population that only use that 3rd party private company to communicate. The government is still responsible for reaching those people, and it’s also responsible for keeping the 3rd party private company regulated.
Also this particular story isn’t as worrisome because only Canadian news organizations were removed. Wildfire coverage from other countries should still show up.
Copying another comment I saw:
Or take responsibility for creating the situation with a nonsensical link tax.
I don’t like Facebook, but this idea that Facebook or Google is stealing from a news organization by linking to it is about as asinine as game companies going after Twitch streamers for promoting their game.
I haven’t followed this super closely, but I think some Canadian news organizations must have gotten greedy and decided to play chicken and double dip on an already mutually beneficial relationship, not realizing the other party would just say “okay, you don’t want to be on our site, fine.”
I agree, the Link Tax the government created is dangerous.
All the information is available on the respective ne s outlet and radio stations. It doesn’t need to be on Facebook for you to see it.